Charles Musser
Biographic Data
| ID | 1200399 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Charles Musser |
| GIVEN NAMES | Charles |
| FAMILY NAME | Musser |
| SIGNATURE | MUSSER C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yale University |
| ORCID | 0009-0002-6803-3784 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 16 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 23 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1979 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Early Cinema and the Historiographic Impulse
Creativity and collaboration
China’s Van Goghs, a documentary by Yu Haibo and Kiki Yu, invites us to examine the creative practices and daily lives of the worker-painters in Dafen Oil Painting Village (Shenzhen, China). Their hand-made copies of Vincent van Gogh paintings raise significant theoretical and philosophical questions about Art and reproducibility in the twenty first century—including the persistence of aura making activities and their relation to folk art and kit…
The Proto-Hollywood Novel
Before the Hollywood novel emerged as a well-established literary genre in the early 1920s, various American authors were writing novels about moviemaking in both serial and book form. Not unlike the preclassical Hollywood movies of the 1910s, these “proto-Hollywood novels” were more than simple antecedents. Many were set in New York City and took their cues from novels about the theater world. Others were set in the Far West, including Californi…
Politicking and Emergent Media
Politicking and Emergent Media looks at four presidential campaigns in the United States during the long 1890s (1888-1900) and the ways in which Republicans and Democrats mobilized a wide variety of media forms in their efforts to achieve electoral victory. The 1890s was a pivotal era in which new means of audio and visual inscription were first deployed. Newspapers remained the dominant media, and Democrats had gained sufficient advantage in 188…
American Showman
American Showman is a fascinating, passionate, and definitive biography of Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel—a man who had little life outside of his work. The book includes a substantial section of photographs but not a single glimpse of his apparently patient wife and their two children. There is also not much indication that he had any real friends. Students of 1910s and 1920s American cinema certainly know that Rothafel was a prominent New York exhibito…
The Man Who Made Movies
The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson PAUL SPEHR Hertsfordshire, John Libbey, 2008 712 pp., illus., bibliography, index, £35.00 (hardback) Paul Spehr has written a masterful study that will unque
Political documentary, YouTube and the 2008 US presidential election
This essay investigates elements of the changing media landscape between the 2004 and the 2008 US presidential elections, focusing on the audio-visual works of two prominent independent organizations: Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films and David Bossie's Citizens United. After Kerry's defeat in 2004, Greenwald's organization gradually shifted from its production of political documentaries such as Uncovered: The Truth About the War in Iraq to a he…
To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights
To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul* Charles Musser (bio) . . . the white American, figuratively [forces] the Negro down into the deeper level of his consciousness, into the inner world, where reason and madness mingle with hope and memory and endlessly give birth to nightmare and to dream; down into the province of the psychiatrist, and the artist, from whence spring the lu…
Reading Local Histories of Early Film Exhibition, Part II
(1999). Reading Local Histories of Early Film Exhibition, Part II: Roger William Warren's 'History of Motion Picture Exhibition in Denver, 1896-1911' Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television: Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 247-253
Nationalism and the Beginnings of Cinema
Reading Local Histories of Early Film Exhibition
1995). Reading Local Histories of Early Film Exhibition: Sylvester Quinn Breard's ‘A History of the Motion Pictures in New Orleans, 1896–1908’. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television: Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 581-585
Le cinema americain des premiers temps et ses modeles de production
Early American cinema and its production patterns, Charles Musser. A new reading of the birth and development of the early cinema's production patterns shows how long it took for hierarchies to be established between the various occupations and fonctions before the emergence of the producer. This relative flexibility of the division of labor in the cinema industry invalidates the often-made comparison with the standardized model of mass productio…
Before the Nickelodeon
Journal Article Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company. By Charles Musser. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. xii, 591 pp. Cloth, $60.00, ISBN 0-520-06080-6. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 0-520-06986-2.) Get access David E. Nye David E. Nye Odense University, Odense, Denmark Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 81, Issue 3, December 1…
Through the Looking-Glass of Film
Miriam Hansen describes a shot in Intolerance where an aging woman, neglected at a ball, looks into a mirror that reflects back not her image but a darkened abstraction. Central to cinema studies are the questions of what Miss Jenkins sees in the mirror, how the director uses it in relation to his larger story, what it means to those people who glanced for a moment at this sign amidst a welter of others, and what social meaning can be derived fro…
Shared Pleasures
Journal Article Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States. By Douglas Gomery. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. xxii + 381 pp. Cloth, $40.00, ISBN 0-299-13210-2. Paper, $15.95, ISBN 0-299-13214-5.) Get access Charles Musser Charles Musser Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 2, Septemb…
Before the Nickelodeon
Before the Nickelodeon
Work, Ideology and Chaplin's Tramp
Research Article| May 01 1988 Work, Ideology and Chaplin's Tramp Charles Musser Charles Musser Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Radical History Review (1988) 1988 (41): 37–66. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-1988-41-37 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citat…
"I. Another Look at the "Chaser Theory
Racism in the Cinama
Charles Musser Responds
American Vitagraph
The Early Cinema of Edwin Porter
Politicking and Emergent Media
Politicking and Emergent Media looks at four presidential campaigns in the United States during the long 1890s (1888-1900) and the ways in which Republicans and Democrats mobilized a wide variety of media forms in their efforts to achieve electoral victory. The 1890s was a pivotal era in which new means of audio and visual inscription were first deployed. Newspapers remained the dominant media, and Democrats had gained sufficient advantage in 188…
American Vitagraph
Political documentary, YouTube and the 2008 US presidential election
This essay investigates elements of the changing media landscape between the 2004 and the 2008 US presidential elections, focusing on the audio-visual works of two prominent independent organizations: Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films and David Bossie's Citizens United. After Kerry's defeat in 2004, Greenwald's organization gradually shifted from its production of political documentaries such as Uncovered: The Truth About the War in Iraq to a he…
Nationalism and the Beginnings of Cinema
Reading Local Histories of Early Film Exhibition
1995). Reading Local Histories of Early Film Exhibition: Sylvester Quinn Breard's ‘A History of the Motion Pictures in New Orleans, 1896–1908’. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television: Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 581-585
The Early Cinema of Edwin Porter
The Early Cinema of Edwin Porter
Racism in the Cinama
Charles Musser Responds
American Vitagraph
"I. Another Look at the "Chaser Theory
Work, Ideology and Chaplin's Tramp
Research Article| May 01 1988 Work, Ideology and Chaplin's Tramp Charles Musser Charles Musser Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Radical History Review (1988) 1988 (41): 37–66. https://doi.org/10.1215/01636545-1988-41-37 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citat…
Through the Looking-Glass of Film
Miriam Hansen describes a shot in Intolerance where an aging woman, neglected at a ball, looks into a mirror that reflects back not her image but a darkened abstraction. Central to cinema studies are the questions of what Miss Jenkins sees in the mirror, how the director uses it in relation to his larger story, what it means to those people who glanced for a moment at this sign amidst a welter of others, and what social meaning can be derived fro…
Shared Pleasures
Journal Article Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States. By Douglas Gomery. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. xxii + 381 pp. Cloth, $40.00, ISBN 0-299-13210-2. Paper, $15.95, ISBN 0-299-13214-5.) Get access Charles Musser Charles Musser Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 2, Septemb…
Before the Nickelodeon
Before the Nickelodeon
Before the Nickelodeon
Journal Article Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company. By Charles Musser. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. xii, 591 pp. Cloth, $60.00, ISBN 0-520-06080-6. Paper, $29.95, ISBN 0-520-06986-2.) Get access David E. Nye David E. Nye Odense University, Odense, Denmark Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 81, Issue 3, December 1…
Reading Local Histories of Early Film Exhibition
1995). Reading Local Histories of Early Film Exhibition: Sylvester Quinn Breard's ‘A History of the Motion Pictures in New Orleans, 1896–1908’. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television: Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 581-585
Le cinema americain des premiers temps et ses modeles de production
Early American cinema and its production patterns, Charles Musser. A new reading of the birth and development of the early cinema's production patterns shows how long it took for hierarchies to be established between the various occupations and fonctions before the emergence of the producer. This relative flexibility of the division of labor in the cinema industry invalidates the often-made comparison with the standardized model of mass productio…
To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights
To Redream the Dreams of White Playwrights: Reappropriation and Resistance in Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul* Charles Musser (bio) . . . the white American, figuratively [forces] the Negro down into the deeper level of his consciousness, into the inner world, where reason and madness mingle with hope and memory and endlessly give birth to nightmare and to dream; down into the province of the psychiatrist, and the artist, from whence spring the lu…
Reading Local Histories of Early Film Exhibition, Part II
(1999). Reading Local Histories of Early Film Exhibition, Part II: Roger William Warren's 'History of Motion Picture Exhibition in Denver, 1896-1911' Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television: Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 247-253
Nationalism and the Beginnings of Cinema
Political documentary, YouTube and the 2008 US presidential election
This essay investigates elements of the changing media landscape between the 2004 and the 2008 US presidential elections, focusing on the audio-visual works of two prominent independent organizations: Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films and David Bossie's Citizens United. After Kerry's defeat in 2004, Greenwald's organization gradually shifted from its production of political documentaries such as Uncovered: The Truth About the War in Iraq to a he…
The Man Who Made Movies
The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson PAUL SPEHR Hertsfordshire, John Libbey, 2008 712 pp., illus., bibliography, index, £35.00 (hardback) Paul Spehr has written a masterful study that will unque
American Showman
American Showman is a fascinating, passionate, and definitive biography of Samuel “Roxy” Rothafel—a man who had little life outside of his work. The book includes a substantial section of photographs but not a single glimpse of his apparently patient wife and their two children. There is also not much indication that he had any real friends. Students of 1910s and 1920s American cinema certainly know that Rothafel was a prominent New York exhibito…
Politicking and Emergent Media
Politicking and Emergent Media looks at four presidential campaigns in the United States during the long 1890s (1888-1900) and the ways in which Republicans and Democrats mobilized a wide variety of media forms in their efforts to achieve electoral victory. The 1890s was a pivotal era in which new means of audio and visual inscription were first deployed. Newspapers remained the dominant media, and Democrats had gained sufficient advantage in 188…
The Proto-Hollywood Novel
Before the Hollywood novel emerged as a well-established literary genre in the early 1920s, various American authors were writing novels about moviemaking in both serial and book form. Not unlike the preclassical Hollywood movies of the 1910s, these “proto-Hollywood novels” were more than simple antecedents. Many were set in New York City and took their cues from novels about the theater world. Others were set in the Far West, including Californi…
Early Cinema and the Historiographic Impulse
Creativity and collaboration
China’s Van Goghs, a documentary by Yu Haibo and Kiki Yu, invites us to examine the creative practices and daily lives of the worker-painters in Dafen Oil Painting Village (Shenzhen, China). Their hand-made copies of Vincent van Gogh paintings raise significant theoretical and philosophical questions about Art and reproducibility in the twenty first century—including the persistence of aura making activities and their relation to folk art and kit…
Art (16 works) · Cinema and Media Studies (11 works) · History (11 works) · Art history (10 works) · History (7 works) · Sociology (7 works) · Political science (6 works) · Movie theater (5 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Psychology (5 works)